Bright Ideas Blog Hop~Guided Writing Journals

Hi, Friends! How are ya?  I hope you’re having a hoppin’ good time gathering lots of exciting ideas for your classroom!

In Room 159, we love reading. We love writing. We love writing about reading too! One way we accomplish this is through the use of guided writing journals.  Guided writing takes place at the small group table at the end of our guided reading lesson {on day 2 or 3}. It helps us to extend and reflect on the text we're reading.

 

 

Sometimes, our reflections look like graphic organizers. I keep lots of different sticky notes on hand for quick assembly in notebooks. The novelty of holiday and themed sticky notes helps to maintain interest in the journals.

There are also times when I pose a question for students to use to take a deeper look at the text and respond to it. We share our responses when everyone is done. This helps students to explain and provide textual examples to support the position they've taken to answer and respond to essential questions.

 

 

For emerging readers, guided writing journals also contain word work, sight word sentences, and illustrations to respond to reading. In order to help students organize journals, we use lots of coding dots, sticky notes and stickers.  Lastly, we’re also beginning to use this as a place for me to jot quick notes to students to encourage them or give them kudos for their hard work.

 

Do you use guided writing journals in your classroom?  If not, I hope this "bright idea" might shine a little light on your considering to do so! =)

 

Next up on the hop is Stacey from Teaching Ever After. She has a great post about organizing for a month at a time! I can certainly use some help with that! You can hop to her post by clicking her blog button below.

 

 

 



Not up for a one by one hop? That’s okay too! Alternatively, you can search by topic, using the link up below and move along to any other stop on the blog hop.  Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

Five for Friday~Bar-ba-loot Shapes

Hi, Friends! How are ya? This week started out R-O-U-G-H, but we are now officially on spring break so this chica has NO complaints!



Linking up with Kacey, is always a great way for me to reflect over the best of our week. This picture kind of sums up how my kiddos feel about me having to be out unexpectedly….

 
Let’s see….how can I put this nicely? My class…is lovely. They’re the cutest bunch of inquisitive little smart cookies on the planet. We explore. Create. Build. Play. Work hard…..but we rarely do worksheets.  What may look like a worksheet to someone outside of our room is often the end state or last step in a process of hands on exploration. Soooooooo, when I leave them in the hands of a substitute, they kind of sorta, all out loose their minds! They don’t like them, don’t want ‘em and will stretch a sub to within an inch of their sanity!!! It’s taken me awhile to figure out why and then it hit me like a ton of bricks!

I give my kids choices. We vote on a lot of the “how” of what we do each day. They have a voice. I’m not there to tell them what to do all day long; I’m there to guide them. To facilitate the environment in which they learn. We set expectations together; I trust them and I leave them alone to meet them. If they need support, their classmates and I are there to help.

I know kids rather learn in fun, active ways. We rock at it everyday. What comes natural to us in the classroom, does not always come natural to someone who has to cover for me for the day. It’s a really challenging thing for my students to accept, especially considering how much personal responsibility they're given each day sooooooo, when I walked in the door on Thursday they were excited to get back to our “normal”…..{after a little chat about not scaring the substitutes away}. =)



We’ve been building bigger words during word work. First graders LOVE compound words! I always love using this little activity! Students each stand in a spot around the room. 1/2 of each word  card is passed out to two different students. After each student has a card, they then silently walk around the room to find their match. Everyone is capable of completing this successfully because they have the picture to help. We meet back at the carpet to share BIG words and create a word web. When we return from break, this activity will be extended into literacy stations too. You can check it out HERE.



In math, we wrapped up our unit on shapes and figures. After having so much fun with the Lorax last week, this was a perfect activity for my little Bar-ba-loots! We used marshmallows to represent vertices and toothpicks to represent edges. Each student created 3 figures.



After building their figures, each student got 3 sticky notes. One for each figure, to label the name of the figure and record its attributes.



Our room smelled yummy and constructing each shape really helped students to “see” and “feel” the attributes. Walmart has this selection of sticky notes. They’re in the holiday section for Easter, but also resembled two stories we worked with this week….Little Rabbit’s Tale and Chicken Little.

We’ll be using pieces of this little packet during math stations when we get back too.

    
 Here’s to a fun and restful spring break! See ya later!

 

Fantastical Seusstastical March CURRENTLY

Hi, Friends! How are ya? I’m linking up with Farley at Oh Boy it’s 4th grade for this month’s CURRENTLY.  My wheel’s tend to turn best after dark, so I’m stopping in to share the SUPER silliness that took over our classroom last week.

Monday is Read Across America in celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday. We also have a spring Open House next week. In preparation for it, we celebrated with a fun Seuss author study a little early.



I love my little Barbaloots; we’ve been working hard and it’s time for some rest and relaxation. We’ve got 5 days ‘til spring break….BRING.IT.ON!!!

THINKING….YIKES, time flies! March morning work will be wrapped and ready for tomorrow. No worries.

WANTING…a day in between Saturday and Sunday, to actually REST! Saturday=housework. Sunday=worship and prepping for the week. Can we get a fun day in between, lol?!

NEEDING….{back to March morning work….}

?????……Seuss, shapes and fractions is the answer. Can you guess the question?



There’s no way to read Dr. Seuss without playing with rhyme. We began the week with a little book titled Come Rhyme with Me, THEN went all in to every Dr. Seuss book we could get our hands on. I think I’ve finally got all of the knots out of my tongue…dedicating a week to alliteration and rhyme was FUN!



Each of our sections of 1st grade, chose one book as the main focus for the week. Our class’ selection was The Lorax. This is our story map that we created after reading it. We also had fun comparing and contrasting the book to the movie.



We created a quick reading response that crossed over into our math time too. {Cross curricular connections….yep, we’re all about that!} Students wrote to complete the sentence….If The Once-ler gave me the last truffula seed, I would…..

…then, traced and cut their handprints to use as the Lorax’s mustache. After creating the Lorax topper, we left the craft on our desks to dry and headed to lunch.

When we came back, students drew their open hand inside the illustration square at the top of the page. Their hand was drawn open in order to “catch” the truffula seed tossed down by The Once-ler.

With our math focus being shapes, student groups were assigned a plane shape or solid figure to trace, cut/assemble, and glue into the open hand drawn on their paper. The shape assigned was determined by the level of difficulty or extension students’ could handle in order to deepen learning of geometric shapes because they would have to then discuss attributes and sort by 2D or 3D. Here’s a closer look….



After we caught and planted truffula seeds in math, the next day….guess what?! They sprouted in our library corner! Those seeds grow fast!



Lots of oooooohs and ahhhhhs were heard and interest in the reading corner is renewed at a time in the year when lots of ants are in 1st graders pants, lol!



Students continued making connections during literacy stations throughout the week. Have I mentioned how much I love my kids yet?! I DO! I sooo DO! When one of them started waving his paper at me from across the room, I knew there were sparks flying in that head of his. Sure enough, I walk over and he’s illustrating more shapes at the writing station….discussing attributes with his stations buddy and REACHING WAY beyond the truffula seed to real world examples. ***LOVE the way they think!!!***

 

By Friday, we were ready for Show, NOT tell….students brought in real world examples and kept them hidden inside of a brown paper bag. After giving their classmates clues to reinforce the learning of attributes and get in more of that math language, guesses were made and the shape or figure was revealed. This smart cookie made sure to write his clues on his bag so he wouldn’t forget! =)

 

Friday was such a frenzy of a fun, exciting kind of day….annnnd they did such an amazing job sharing, we completely ran out of time, so we’ll continue to Show, NOT tell on Monday.



And the Lorax will be there to welcome them back!



Big ole hairy mustache and all….we’ll start Monday out having a ball!

 

Getting ready to have a rhyme time kinda week of your own? Click the pic above to grab a freebie to add to your fun!